My journeys in finding the perfect dining room chair

When I left off I was talking about my adventures into dining room decorations. I had found the perfect dining table. My walls were painted the prettiest green anyone could imagine. Pieces were falling into place for my very first grown up apartment.

I stepped back to admire my stunning living space and realized there was something missing. How could I forget something as important as dining chairs? Where were my guests going to sit when they came over for delicious dinner parties?

I once again turned to my trusty sources. The internet gave me two well loved chairs that needed a bit of love to revive them to their former glory. The hunt was still on to complete my set of fabulous
dining room chairs. I hunted and hunted. Frustrated I put the search on hold for a pair to compliment the ones sitting in my apartment.



Instead I focused on how I was going to refurnish these stately chairs. Many different things came to mind. I could paint them, stain them. Cover them completely in fabric, endless possibilities. One thing was for certain, the well worn dated pattern on the seats were the first thing that would need to go.
In the end I decided the best and easiest thing to do would be to paint the chairs a solid color and cover the seats with a cute fabric. I really didn’t want to have a green overload, also, thinking long term for future places of residence. I had to choose my paint and fabric carefully.

I ended up painting the chairs this gorgeous deep brown, almost as rich as a dark chocolate bar. The seats got carefully removed, the old fabric hastily discarded. I also bought new cushioning for the inside of the seat, and settled on this thick upholstery fabric with an intricate leaf pattern. I get weepy thinking about how stunning these chairs turned out.

However my work was far from over, I still had to find two more chairs. One weekend I decided to take a drive as far out of the city as I could, in this small town I found the missing pieces in my dream dining room. These two chairs were almost identical to the ones I had already found and fixed up. Overwhelmed and overjoyed I carefully packed them into my car. I stopped to get a piece of pie from the stand on the side of the road and turned around to head back into the city. As I write this I look into my dining room and can’t believe that this dining room set is mine. I have lots more to do in my place, and I cannot wait to share more of my adventures into the adult world.

-RL

The Dining Library of Congress

One of my friends has a bookcase in her dining room. When she moved into the townhouse with her husband and two children, she had nowhere else to put it. It was stuffed full of books in no particular order; all jumbled together were nonfiction, fiction, magazines and miscellaneous items that were stuck on the shelves for want of a better home. It bothered her because the bookcase had a dark cherry finish while the dining table and chairs were a two-tone, country style dining set in white and light wood colors. The mismatched vibe she got whenever she sat at the table made her feel uncomfortable.

The casual dining table was actually a hand-me-down from her in-laws, and even though she ultimately wanted a dining room taken from the pages of Better Homes and Gardens, she was reluctant to replace the table until her children were old enough to do crafty things in their own rooms. In truth, she was quite proud of the historical record her dining tabletop documented, as her son and daughter grew past the finger painting, eating glue and dried-in-the-hair paper mache glob stages. But then something happened that changed the fate of her mismatched dining room forever.

Her mother was moving 400 miles away and wanted to know if she would like the formal dining room table that she had grown up with. Because her dining room was narrow and somewhat awkwardly shaped, she went to her mother’s place to measure the table and found that yes, it would indeed fit in their house.

Once the dining table and matching chairs had been arranged in their new home, my friend was very pleased with the result. It had a rich cherry finish that softly glowed in the light filtering through the window. The upholstered side dining chairs were covered in a neutral fabric that was relatively new, since her mother had had them redone recently. But there was still the matter of the pesky bookcase to deal with. It inspired her to wander into each room to search for a new place to put it. No such luck.

Resigned to having to live with the large bookcase in her (almost perfect) dining room, one day, after searching through cupboards and other stuff for a particular recipe in preparation for a special celebration with friends, she had a brilliant idea. Both made of darker woods, it occurred to her that the bookcase really complemented the dining table. Instead of fighting a losing battle, why not make it a focal point? She removed everything from the bookshelves and replaced them with her cookbooks – every single one she owned. The top two shelves of the center section were reserved for her collection of novelty milk jugs and creamers. Turning a liability into an asset, she had created a handy reference library that would save her a lot of time and frustration.

101 Ways for a Family to Have Fun

The Christmas I was thirteen and my sister seven and a half, our family received 101 games from Santa. Long before RTA (ready-to-assemble) furniture became popular, the games board, resembling a large octagonal tabletop, had four accompanying legs that, once attached to its underside, magically converted it into a games table. It came with game pieces for 101 different table games, and it seemed like it was just the ticket for elevating family night to a whole new level.

The first time we pulled up our dining chairs up to the game table, it was more like a comedy of errors than a fun family get-together. In no time at all, the tabletop was covered beneath a mound of game pieces pulled from out of the box all at once in an attempt to find the instruction booklet. Once the instructions were located, it was then a simple matter of choosing one of 101 games that everyone would enjoy participating in. By the time we had finally agreed upon a game listed in the booklet that none of us had heard of before, I was longing for a comfortably familiar game of Monopoly.

The next time we gathered around the games table to play, we picked one randomly by flipping open the booklet and having my sister point (with her eyes closed) to one on the page. It was fun and a little raucous; I don’t remember now the name of the game, but it involved throwing large plastic red, black, blue and white rings onto wood pegs. After a few months worth of family nights, we had tried about 40 of the 101 possible games. But no matter which ones we chose, one thing became acutely clear to me; I wasn’t particularly good at any of them. My sister, on the other hand won regularly.

After repeated trouncing by my sister, family 101 games nights didn’t seem as much fun. To survive family game night, I developed a game plan of my own. I would sidle my dining chair up to the table and play a few games before taking a break, supposedly for a glass of water, but when I returned, it was only to watch the action from behind my father’s shoulder. But my mother was too smart; when she caught on to what I was up to, I was “invited” to pick a new game from the many to choose from.

The goal was to play all of the 101 games and then keep playing our favorites. Even though we never made if through the entire list, (and in spite of not winning as often as I liked), the games table did give family fun night a whole new outlook, leaving my sister and I with some fond memories after all these years. Still, it’s probably not too late for a rematch.